The pattern in the media reportage about stem cells is growing very
wearisome. When a research advance occurs with embryonic stem cells, the media
usually give the story the brass-band treatment. However, when researchers
announce even greater success using adult stem cells, the media reportage is
generally about as intense and excited as a stifled yawn. As a consequence, many
people in this country continue to believe that embryonic stem cells offer the
greatest promise for developing new medical treatments using the body's cells
— known as regenerative medicine — while in actuality, adult and alternative
sources of stem cells have demonstrated much brighter prospects. This
misperception has societal consequences, distorting the political debate over
human cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and perhaps even affecting
levels of public and private research funding of embryonic and adult stem-cell
therapies.

This media pattern was again in evidence in the reporting of two very
important research breakthroughs announced within the last two weeks. Unless you
made a point of looking for these stories — as I do in my work — you might
have missed them. Patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis
received significant medical benefit using experimental adult-stem-cell
regenerative medical protocols. These are benefits that supporters of
embryonic-stem-cell treatments have yet to produce widely in animal experiments.
Yet adult stem cells are now beginning to ameliorate suffering in human beings.

Celebrity Parkinson's disease victims such as Michael J. Fox and Michael
Kinsley regularly tout ESCR as the best hope for a cure of their disease.
Indeed, the Washington Post recently published a Kinsley rant on the
subject in which the editor and former Crossfire co-host denounced
opponents of human cloning as interfering with his hope for a cure. Yet as
loudly as Fox and Kinsley promote ESCR in the media or before legislative
committees, both have remained strangely silent about the most remarkable
Parkinson's stem-cell experiment yet attempted: one in which researchers treated
Parkinson's with the patient's own adult stem cells.

Here's the story, in case you missed it: A man in his mid-50s had been
diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 49. The disease grew progressively, leading to
tremors and rigidity in the patient's right arm. Traditional drug therapy did
not help

Stem cells were harvested from the patient's brain using a routine brain
biopsy procedure. They were cultured and expanded to several million cells.
About 20 percent of these matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. In March
1999, the cells were injected into the patient's brain.

Three months after the procedure, the man's motor skills had improved by 37
percent and there was an increase in dopamine production of 55.6 percent. One
year after the procedure, the patient's overall Unified Parkinson's Disease
Rating Scale had improved by 83 percent — this at a time when he was
not taking any other Parkinson's medication!

That is an astonishing, remarkable success, one that you would have thought
would set off blazing headlines and lead stories on the nightly news. Had the
treatment been achieved with embryonic stem cells, undoubtedly the newspapers
would have screamed loudly enough to be heard. Unfortunately, reportage about
the Parkinson's success story was strangely muted. True, the Washington Post
ran an inside-the-paper story and there were some wire service reports. But the
all-important New York Times — the one news outlet that drives
television and cable news — did not report on it at all. Nor did a search of
the Los Angeles Times website yield any stories about the experiment.

Human multiple-sclerosis patients have now also benefited from
adult-stem-cell regenerative medicine. A study conducted by the Washington
Medical Center in Seattle involved 26 rapidly deteriorating MS patients. First,
physicians stimulated stem cells from the patients' bone marrow to enter the
bloodstream. They then harvested the stem cells and gave the patients strong
chemotherapy to destroy their immune systems. (MS is an autoimmune disorder in
which the patient's body attacks the protective sheaths that surround bundles of
nerves.) Finally, the researchers reintroduced the stem cells into the patients,
hoping they would rebuild healthy immune systems and ameliorate the MS symptoms.

It worked. Of the 26 patients, 20 stabilized and six improved. Three patients
experienced severe infections and one died.

That is a very positive advance offering great hope. But rather than making
headlines, the test got less attention than successful animal studies using
embryonic cells. The Los Angeles Times ran a brief bylined description,
while the New York Times and Washington Post only published wire
reports. Once again, the media's almost grudging coverage prevented society at
large from becoming acutely aware of how exciting adult-cell regenerative
medicine is fast becoming.

Meanwhile in Canada, younger MS patients whose diseases were not as far
advanced as those in the Washington study have shown even greater benefit from
the same procedure. Six months after the first patient was treated, she was
found to have no evidence of the disease on MRI scans. Three other patients have
also received successful adult-stem-cell grafts with no current evidence of
active disease.

It's still too early to tell whether the Canadian patients have achieved
permanent remission or a cure, but there can be no question that the research is
significant. Yet the story was only publicized in Canada's Globe and Mail
and in reports on Canadian television. American outlets did not mention the
experiments at all.

These Parkinson's and MS studies offer phenomenal evidence of the tremendous
potential adult cell regenerative medicine offers. At the same time, the
unspectacular coverage these breakthroughs received highlights the odd lack of
interest in adult stem-cell research exhibited by most mainstream media outlets.
Nor are these stories the only adult-stem-cell successes to have gotten the
media cold shoulder.

It's worth recapping just a few of the other advances made in adult-cell
therapies and research in the last two years, all of which were significantly
underplayed in the media:

Israeli doctors inserted a paraplegic patient's own white blood cells into
her severed spinal cord, after which she regained bladder control and the
ability to wiggle her toes and move her legs. (I only saw reporting on this
case in the Globe and Mail, June 15, 2001.)

Immune systems destroyed by cancer were restored in children using stem
cells from umbilical-cord blood. (There was a good story in the April 16,
2001 Time, but other than that I saw no reporting.)

At Harvard University, mice with Type I diabetes were completely cured of
their disease. The experiment was so successful that human trials are now
planned. (This was reported in the July 19, 2001, Harvard University
Gazette, but I saw no coverage at all in the mainstream press.)

Diabetic mice treated with adult stem cells achieved full insulin
production and all lived. This is in contrast to an experiment in which
embryonic stem cells injected into diabetic mice achieved a 3 percent
insulin production rate and all the mice died. (According to the May 2001 STATS,
published by the Statistical Assessment Service, the embryo experiment made
big news while the media ignored the adult cell experiment.)

How many humans have been treated by embryonic stem cells? Zero. Indeed,
before human trials can even be safely undertaken researchers will have to
overcome two serious difficulties that stand between patients and
embryonic-cell regenerative medicine: 1) ES cells cause tumors, and 2) ES
cells may be rejected by the immune system. Surmounting these difficulties
— if they can be surmounted at all — will take a very long time and much
expense. There is no risk of rejection with adult cells, by contrast,
because they come from the patients' own bodies. Nor, at least so far, does
adult-stem-cell therapy appear to cause tumors. This puts adult therapies
years ahead of the game.

The media continue to imply that embryos hold the key to the future. But
increasingly, it looks as if our own body cells offer the quickest and best hope
for regenerative medicine. The time has come for the public to insist that the
media stop acting as if adult stem cells are the "wrong" kind of stem
cells, and report to the American people fully and fairly the remarkable
advances continually being made in adult regenerative medicine.

NOTE: For more information and other articles
by Wesley J. Smith on
stem cell research published in the National Review Online, go to http://www.nationalreview.com/
and enter the topic or author "Wesley J. Smith" in NRO's search
button.

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